CRISIS MAGAZINE

      From the Philadelphia Free Press, December 24, 2019

                               Thom Nickels

    Not long after the disastrous Roman Catholic Synod of Bishops for the Amazon in Rome, I thought about searching for strange objects in local Philadelphia Catholic churches.

   By ‘objects’ I mean the two pregnant female fertility figures (in bright red lipstick) that were on prominent display during the Synod’s religious ceremonies attended by Pope Francis. The use of the figurines so enraged some conservative and traditional Catholics that they were stolen from the Church of Traspontina, near Saint Peter’s Basilica, and thrown into the Tiber River as blasphemous idols.  

   The “thief,” as it turned out, was a gutsy, smart 26 year old Austrian, Alexander Tschugguel, who planned the “theft” after seeing the idols being paraded about and venerated as if they were icons of the Virgin Mary. 

   “I saw in those statues and in those idols … a break of the First Commandment,” Tschugguel said.

E. Michael Jones, born in Philadelphia

   As a follower of all things Roman Catholic (despite the fact that I now attend a Russian Orthodox Church), I was mystified when I first saw pictures of strange Amazon Synod: South American peasants in native war (or peace) paint carrying giant wicker baskets and dancing a kind of two/ three step-- five steps forward, ten steps back—before   going down on all fours in the middle of Saint Peter’s to kiss what many say were false goddesses of Mother Earth, part of a pagan religious belief in South America.

   I tried to imagine such a thing happening in an Orthodox Church, but I could not.   

       At least 100 Catholic priests and lay scholars published a statement protesting the so called pagan worship of Pachamama during the Amazon Synod in Rome. The group called upon the Pope to “repent publicly and unambiguously of these objectively grave sins” and asked bishops’ around the world to “offer fraternal correction to Pope Francis for these scandals.”

  Meanwhile, the Austrian guy who threw the idols into the Tiber went on a US speaking engagement tour calling for a return to true Catholic tradition, especially the Latin Mass.  He spoke in Dallas and later at a swanky wine and cheese gathering of traditionalists in New York City. At both events he announced the founding of a new organization,  Saint Boniface Institute, dedicated to rescuing the Roman Church from the plague of modernism.

   While I still harbor a love for traditional Catholicism, at the same time I realize that many traditionalists are not nice people. In many cases they can be the first to brandish the word ‘heretic,’ ‘sinner,’ ‘sodomite,’ etc. Recently I submitted an essay on (now deceased) Malachi Martin to the 0nline (conservative) Crisis Magazine. While the work was accepted and published, three days later it was removed from the site.  When I wrote the editor asking what had happened to the piece, he said he had received criticisms questioning its scholarship, so he removed it.

Michael Voris of Church Militant: What a Head of Hair!

  I smelled a rotten tomato right away.

  Scholarship was really not an issue because the essay was based on Martin’s narrative of what took place in a church in Rome in the 1960s. My library of Martin books is extensive and every quote in the essay was verifiable and accurate. So what was the real reason the essay was removed? It took a traditionalist Catholic Facebook friend to suggest that a Crisis reader probably Google- searched my name and discovered that I’d published a number of gay books, most notably Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia. This fact, apparently, was enough to warrant removal of the essay.

  This theory seemed more than plausible. Some years ago I contacted Tan Books, a conservative Catholic publisher/distributor, for a review copy of a book I wanted to write about. I then received an email from someone from Tan Books telling me that my request could not be honored because I had an questionable publishing history. That publishing history, of course, had to do with writing and publishing gay books. As a sort of consolation prize, I was told that I was still permitted to purchase books from Tan (money talks), but review copies were off limits.    

  It pains me to write this, but the uncharitable face of traditional Catholicism is widespread and more often the norm than not. It is especially evident on the Web.  One need only check out videos by Michael Voris of Church Militant, Dr. Marshall Taylor, or author E. Michael Jones to experience the thundering rhetoric of intolerance. I am not talking about religious objections to same sex marriage but about an animus way beyond that.

    Voris has had to explain his own participation in the “homosexual lifestyle” that came to light several years ago. Voris addressed the controversy, said he had repented and was no longer on that road but his confession still hurt him in the eyes of some traditionalists who tend to view him as “forever tainted.” Today Voris seems to operate in overcompensation mode, going out of his way, like a modern day Girolamo Savonarola, to tie sodomites with every evil on earth. 

Oh Mama Oh Mama Oh Mama

  The articulate E. Michael Jones, a Philadelphian by birth now living in Indiana, has said in his videos that since all homosexuals, reformed, celibate or active, are victims of the worst sort of Narcissism, that even Voris, despite his personal transformation, can still be regarded as unstable. In other words, Voris’ Narcissism lives forever, meaning that it affects his reporting and everything he does professionally. Jones might as well be saying that Voris should fold up and retire. 

   

   I got a sense of Jones’ opinion when I viewed a video of Voris traveling to Rome. Decked out in what looked like tight speedos and a form fitting V neck summer sweater over a gym worked body, I had to admit that the Church Militant guy looked every bit the gay man boarding a jet for Fire Island or Provincetown.

   E. Michael Jones seems more homosexually obsessed than Voris. In countless videos he inevitably ends up talking about homosexuals or sodomites. The subject can be Ireland, Logos, US Presidential candidates, Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia, it doesn’t matter, he always returns to the homo thing.

  In his videos Jones never addresses the homosexual as an individual but merely as a component of a larger societal threat.  He never utters a charitable word or shows any compassion for gay men,such as mentioning those who might be struggling with their sexual passions, namely members of the Catholic group Courage, or gay men who don’t subscribe to a political agenda that calls for an end to the patriarchy or abortion on demand. In Jones’ world, every homosexual is an enemy soldier.

     That Crisis magazine editor, for instance, has no idea how I conduct my life. For all he knows, I could be a stalwart celibate member of Courage, or just one of those guys for whom sex no longer holds any interest.  (“It’s too messy anyway,” as Quentin Crisp once observed). 

     

Thom Nickels

Contributing Editor

  

  .